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&#34;Stop the European profiteers&#34;

RNW archive

This article is part of the RNW archive. RNW is the former Radio Netherlands Worldwide or Wereldomroep, which was founded as the Dutch international public broadcaster in 1947. In 2011, the Dutch government decided to cut funding and shift RNW from the ministry of Education, Culture and Science to the ministry of Foreign Affairs. More information about RNW Media’s current activities can be found at https://www.rnw.org/about-rnw-media.

Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders has gathered 75,000 electronic signatures against Europe in less than three days. On Friday, his right-wing populist party launched a website opposing the high salaries of top European Union officials.

Wilders said he set up the website, "Stop the European Profiteers", to launch a popular protest against the extremely high salaries of members of the European Parliament and the European Commission. The website's slogan is: "not a cent more from the Netherlands to Brussels as long as the perverse profiteering continues". On Monday morning, Geert tweeted that 75,000 people had signed his petition.

Brussels has reacted angrily. "Apparently, elections are about to be held in the Netherlands," said a spokesman for the European Commission. "Of course we pay high salaries. We're not baking hamburgers here," he added. In response, Wilders tweeted: "if they only baked hamburgers in Brussels, they would at least be doing something useful".

A European Commissioner earns 27,000 euros a month. The Freedom Party says the starting salary of a European civil servant should be 4600 euros a mnoth. The Commission spokesman added that it was difficult to recruit qualified Dutch civil servants. "Apparently," he said, "we don't pay enough".